EU-AFRICA BUSINESS FORUM - report on Roundtable n° 10: Social Entrepreneurship

EU-AFRICA BUSINESS FORUM
Follow-up report on
Roundtable n° 10: Social Entrepreneurship
Developed by: Max Bulakovskiy
April 2014
Brussels, Belgium

2
EU- Africa Business Forum (2014) - Roundtable 10: Social Entrepreneurship
April 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION................................................................................................... 3
1.1 Rationale ......................................................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Definition.......................................................................................................................................... 5
1.3 Why Social Entrepreneurship? .................................................................................................... 6
1.4 Social Entrepreneurship in the EU .............................................................................................. 7
1.5 Social Entrepreneurship in Africa ................................................................................................ 8
2. ROUNDTABLE ................................................................................................................................. 9
2.1 Roundtable Focus.......................................................................................................................... 9
2.2 Target Audience............................................................................................................................. 9
2.3 Building blocks.............................................................................................................................. 10
2.4 Roundtable Contributors............................................................................................................. 11
3. FINDINGS ....................................................................................................................................... 12
3.1 Roundtable Findings.................................................................................................................... 12
3.2 Roundtable Examples/ Best Practice Cases........................................................................... 13
4. RECOMMENDATIONS................................................................................................................. 15
4.1 Roundtable recommendations................................................................................................... 15
4.2 Five Concrete Actions ................................................................................................................. 16

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April 2014
“Over the past century, researchers have studied business entrepreneurs extensively… In contrast,
social entrepreneurs have received little attention. Historically, they have been cast as humanitarians
or saints, and stories of their work have been passed down more in the form of children's tales than
case studies. While the stories may inspire, they fail to make social entrepreneurs' methods
comprehensible. One can analyze an entrepreneur, but how does one analyze a saint?”
David Bornstein, “How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas”, p. 90;
Oxford University Press, Inc. New York, 2004.

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April 2014
1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
1.1 Rationale
Societal challenges (migration of millions of people from one country to another, urban
population, job creation and youth employment, health issues, ethical production and
consumption, ecological issues etc) are making it difficult for the public authorities and
businesses face them. But they are also source of innovation and pushing entrepreneurs
develop new concepts tapping into the unmet societal needs acting in an entrepreneurial
manner and through new collaboration models.
Absent social security systems and mechanisms in Africa have resulted in source of an
inspiration and innovation giving birth to numerous success stories working with the human
capital, developing new tools to boost health systems and creating mechanisms ensuring
ethical production. New smart-phone apps are helping disabled people move around more
easily; innovative social enterprises are creating new jobs for young people and vulnerable
groups; transformative educational programmes are changing the learning journey of
hundreds of young people and ICT-enabled tools are helping people create entirely new
forms of collaborative and consumptive economies in the field of transportation, recycling, or
culture.
At the same time, the practices of our social ventures [social enterprises] admittedly
constitute but a small niche of economic activity. To illustrate, in the 49 countries that the
GEM initiative surveys, on average no more than 1.8% of the population is engaged in early
stage social entrepreneurial activity (GEM, 2010). So why one should consider them
seriously?
The fact is that societal markets as health, greening, migration-related, poverty etc are
currently growing markets world-wide, and are growing faster many other industries! What is
particularly interesting, is that social ventures represent a unique source of know-how in
these areas, and though they are still modest in terms of input to GDP (around 1% on
average per country), they hold unique knowledge in these areas and can spark change,
innovation and bring a change to society at a much larger scale through collaboration with
public or private sector actors.

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April 2014
1.2 Definition
There are various definitions that can relate to social entrepreneurs. Some of them are only
focused on non-profit organisations while others allow organisations making a profit. Below
we provide examples of two most commonly used definitions for social entrepreneur:
Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing
social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering
new ideas for wide-scale change. They solve the problem by: 1) Changing the system 2)
Spreading the solution, and 3) Persuading entire societies to move in different directions
(ASHOKA)
Social enterprises is “any private activity conducted in the public interest, organised with an
entrepreneurial strategy, but whose main purpose is not the maximisation of profit but the
attainment of certain economic and social goals, and which has the capacity for bringing
innovative solutions to the problems of social exclusion and unemployment” (OECD).
A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to
organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture). While a
business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social
entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. (Wikipedia)
Social entrepreneurship is the process of pursuing innovative solutions to social problems.
Variety of research studies concluded by LSE, IESE, SELUSI and those social entrepreneurs
are generally:
 Mission-driven: the primary goal is to create social value (impact) by mitigating a
social problem or market failure and/or meeting a social need or challenge
 Market-oriented: pursue goals in an entrepreneurial manner, generating own
revenues to sustain themselves
 Collaborative: Social ventures behave very collaboratively when it comes to
innovation – both in terms of having contributed to the development of another
organization’s innovation.

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April 2014
1.3 Why Social Entrepreneurship?
Social entrepreneurs aim to have an impact on society rather than only generating profits for
owners and shareholders. For example, they provide jobs for disadvantaged groups,
promoting their social inclusion and increasing solidarity in the economy. But they face
enormous challenges and an uneven playing field.
A recent EU-funded study, SELUSI1
looked at 550 social enterprises across five EU Member
States which allows us to make conclusions, and especially see the reason for their failures.
The study has concluded that 75% of all ventures that the study tracked are active precisely
in those areas of direct relevance to EU’s ambitions towards inclusive, smart and sustainable
growth (EU2020). On average across all countries, we observe a remarkably high share -
43% to be precise - of social enterprises being run by women. It also concluded that social
enterprises can be an inspiration for innovation compares to large corporations and public
administrations; for example in UK, social ventures are almost 30% more innovative
compared to the mainstream businesses and almost 50% compared to public administration.
These factors make social entrepreneurs an interesting partner / stakeholder for variety of
public and private entities, giving them an important role and ensuring successful outcomes
of projects/ initiatives. Furthermore, supporting social enterprise creation and development
may allow public policies to meet employment and other social, ecological and economic
challenges in a more efficient and effective way than if they rely on the public or private
sectors alone, therefore improving the spending of public money.
1
www.selusi.eu

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April 2014
1.4 Social Entrepreneurship in the EU
Over the last years concept of social entrepreneurship has been gaining thousands of people
across the EU. The recent financial and ethical crisis in Europe has pushed for more and
more people interested in the concept and associating it with their values. In many counties
like Spain, Greece or Italy for many it has become the only way to maintain their economic
activity, get delivering a meaningful sense and providing support to their communities and
stakeholders.
The business magazines, press, and social media have been highlighting numerous
examples of social enterprises, or entrepreneurs pursuing social or environmental goals and
the movement of social entrepreneurship is currently seen as a new trend for many of the
youth. Building on it there is a growing number of funds available focused on social impact
investing, and this includes public money, but also public-private partnerships and even
purely private initiatives - addressing the growing need for availability of equity finance to
support social enterprises. The European Commission has already done a lot to catalyse
social investment (look at the creation of the European Investment Fund’s social investment
facility) and the UK’s creation of Big Society Capital, for example have an important on-going
role.
The new business infrastructure has started appearing, promoting examples of collaborative
creations, developing incubators specialised on providing support in creation of hybrid
business models pursuing social impact measurement combined with profit development
models (Examples include Impact HUB network, NESsT, OKSIGEN Lab, ASHOKA, La
Ruche etc).
On the institutional level over the last years, the European Commission has adopted a
number of measures to promote the awareness and especially support creation of social
enterprises across the EU. In 2011, in the context of the EU 2020 strategy, the EC
presented the Social Business Initiative, an action plan to enhance the framework for social
entrepreneurship by improving access to finance, increasing the visibility of the sector and
raising awareness of the needs of social entrepreneurs among policy makers.
In January 2014 the European Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee
(EESC) and the City of Strasbourg hosted a large European interactive event on social
entrepreneurship and the social economy. The event was joined by the three European
Commissioners - Vice-president Antonio Tajani and Commissioners Michel Barnier and
László Andor. The event confirmed that the Governments and public bodies have started to
recognise the power of social entrepreneurship and have adopted a call for action described
in the Strasbourg Declaration2
affirming the view that social enterprises should play a bigger
role in the future of Europe and have identified concrete actions to unlock their potential for
smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.
2
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/conferences/2014/0116-social-entrepreneurs/docs/strasbourg-
declaration_en.pdf

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April 2014
1.5 Social Entrepreneurship in Africa
Social entrepreneurship as a concept till recently was not often referred to by policymakers
and researchers in many of the African countries; however this does not mean to say that
these countries do not have social entrepreneurship, quite on the opposite African continent
has a rich tradition embodying social and societal values in many business ventures.
As elsewhere in the world the concept of social entrepreneurship is a growing segment of the
African economy3
and it is key in filling gaps in public service delivery and significantly
contributes to solving the societal issues. There are some informal initiatives appearing trying
to build on the latter (ex: ASHOKA Africa, the African Social Entrepreneurs Network (ASEN)
etc). Another proof for the growing interest is the number of the impact investment funds
which have been established in order to support social ventures in Africa.
The recent study presented to the European Parliament in April 2014, through highlights that
some barriers on its development remain, including weak legal frameworks and inadequate
policies, weak governance and poorly developed managerial practices among other issues.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report on Social Entrepreneurship (2009)
highlighted that specifically in Africa, “the higher the level of a region’s pure commercial
entrepreneurship, the more significant is the level of overlap between social and commercial
entrepreneurship, supporting the notion that entrepreneurial economies tend to offer a more
favourable setting for undertaking socially innovative initiatives that depart from the traditional
third sector.” Though report limits to only four countries in Africa where data was available.
The desk research revealed that there is lack of constructive data on Africa, but a number of
recent publications have clearly indicated that there is a growing appetite for the following
needs:
 Capacity building programmes to build the skills of the African practitioners;
 Awareness creation through regular regional panels for practitioners;
 Developing infrastructure (financial and business services) specifically focused on social
enterprises have specific features which create complex needs demanding diversified
solutions. While it is desirable that business support agencies for conventional business
deal with social enterprises and support them, there is also a need for specialised support
agencies (Daniele et al., 2009).
 Encourage creation and development of networks; Support services are often provided by
organisations targeting the upgrading of networks of social enterprise and systems at
national and local levels. Thus membership organisations for social enterprises can be
seen as support structures which are emerging along with the rise of social enterprise
(Leś and Kolin, 2012; Nyssens, 2012).
 Supporting systemic actions by creating bridges with international organisations and
initiatives and especially linking social enterprises and entrepreneurs internationally.
3
An Exploratory Report on the potential of social economy in Africa, March 2014

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April 2014
2. ROUNDTABLE
2.1 Roundtable Focus
Building on the arguments highlighting the growing importance of social entrepreneurship the
fifth EU-AFRICA BUSINESS FORUM held in Brussels hosted the first Roundtable focused
on Social Entrepreneurship. The Roundtable brought together high-level practitioners that
came from diverse backgrounds, including successful social entrepreneurs and
representatives of the leading networks bringing social entrepreneurs together.
The Roundtable focused on key issues relevant to unlocking Africa’s potential of social
entrepreneurship:
 Who are “Social Entrepreneurs” and what their distinctive features are?
 What are the current trends related to Africa and how has social entrepreneurship evolved
over the last few years?
 Practical examples highlighting successes of social enterprises and solutions they are
bringing through applying new technologies, focusing on human capital, creating
collaboration models with businesses etc.
 Businesses and how they get involved in solving social issues.
 Existing support structures and the major barriers for development of social
entrepreneurship in Africa
2.2 Target Audience
The roundtable addressed organisations:
 providing start-up and business development services for social enterprises;
 social finance actors;
 NGO´s;
 businesses;
 donor community;
 public sector organisations working in Africa.
The auditorium was fully occupied with over 50 participants at the roundtable.

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April 2014
2.3 Building blocks
The building blocks of the roundtable were devoted to spreading information on exemplary
cases and reflecting how these could be spread. As the time allocated to the roundtable was
90 minutes, it was used in the following way:
 Chair to introduce the roundtable (background, relevance, issues, framework around
Social Entrepreneurship) Presentation of co-chairs. Presenting the tissue of social
entrepreneurship in Africa.) Bill Carter
 Presenting new opportunities technology brings and how it can solve social issues within
the health area, and what is the potential for spreading this to other countries, example of
mPedigree. Bright Simons (Ghana)
 Presenting available infrastructure for social entrepreneurship and capacity building in
Africa based on the example of Jokkolabs . Karim Sy (Senegal)
 Panel discussion on their experience with social enterprises, what it means to them and
what is their structure, impact, focus and how it can be applied to development (to be
moderated by Chair and co-Chairs) :
o Barka Foundation, Poland
o SkilledAfrikans, Senegal
o MoSera, Ethiopia
o Ferrero Social Enterprises, Italy
o Pearl Gold AG, Germany
 Discussion between the roundtable participants, and with the panellists
 Closing of the Roundtable by the Chair

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April 2014
2.4 Roundtable Contributors
Chair: Mr Bill Carter, Vice-President for Africa at Ashoka. Ashoka is an association of
the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—with system changing solutions for the world’s
most urgent social problems. www.ashoka.org
Co-Chair: Mr Bright Simons, President of mPedigree Network, Ghana, Ashoka fellow.
mPedigree is an organisation noted for its work against counterfeit medicines and the
production of software, that enable the verification of certain products in some countries.
http://mpedigree.net/mpedigreenet/
Co-Chair: Mr Karim Sy, Founder of Jokkolabs, Senegal, Ashoka fellow. Inspired by the
global open source movement and Africa’s traditional emphasis on interdependence,
Karim is providing the online and offline meeting space where young African
entrepreneurs can collaborate and support each other establishing new businesses to
focus on societal challenges. http://jokkolabs.net/?lang=en
Ms Barbara Sadowska, is Vice president of Barka Foundation, Ashoka fellow, Schwab
Social Entrepreneur. For twenty years Barka has been working in Poland with excluded
and vulnerable persons. www.barka.org.pl and the website for the Barka Africa
partnership is www.inise.org
Mr Emmanuel Henao, whose passion for tackling the new human capital development
needs in Africa led him to cofound SkilledAfricans.com. Since 2012, he became an active
member of Jokkolabs. http://www.skilledafricans.com/
Mr Osvalso Lingua, is Vice Secretary General for Ferrero Social Enterprises. Ferrero
Social Enterprises are fully-fledged “businesses” set out to make a profit, but also
operating with a “social” spirit, since they are designed to create jobs and combat the
serious consequences of unemployment in the less advantaged areas of emerging
countries. http://www.ferrerocareers.com/english/ferrero-social-programs/social-
initiatives.php
Mr Lutz Hartmann, is CEO of Pearl Gold AG. Pearl Gold AG is holding company which
invests in high potential gold mine projects in West Africa. What is particular about it is
that it also invests in numerous local businesses created around the mine with the aim to
develop local economy supporting start-ups focused among others on health and
educational services to local communities. http://www.pearlgoldag.com/en/
Mr Sergio Carnevale, is the co-founder of MoSera start-up. MoSera is a mobile-based
solution that tackles bridging the gap between employers and job seekers and improve
issues in employment. https://angel.co/mosera
Mr Max Bulakovskiy, is a development practitioner and the Coordinator of FP7 BENISI
programme focused on identification and scaling of over 300 social innovations across
Europe (www.benisi.eu). He is part of the OKSIGEN Lab for Social Entrepreneurship in
Brussels. www.oksigenlab.eu

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April 2014
3. FINDINGS
3.1 Roundtable Findings
 Social enterprises seem to be particularly well placed to target systemic problems and
societal issues in the areas where businesses or public sector cannot find response. They
tend to work looking at a holistic approach involving not just a single solution but an eco-
system approach, ensuring an impact on each of the players in the value chain.
 There are numerous successful social entrepreneurs and networks linking them already
existing in both Africa and the EU, but common infrastructure for helping to start up,
scaling is still lacking. (Strasbourg Declaration, 2014, Ashoka data)
 Targeted empowering and capacity-building efforts implemented by the practitioners
(already existing social enterprises and change-makers) are needed at African, national
and regional levels to assist social enterprises (both potential donors and users of
business know-how and practices) in getting "ready to scale" and "ready to replicate and
adapt".

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April 2014
3.2 Roundtable Examples / Best Practice Cases
Ashoka (www.ashoka.org) is a global association of the world’s leading
social entrepreneurs — with system changing solutions for the world’s most
urgent social problems. Ashoka finds and supports the best social
innovations, mobilizes thousands of people to create change, and enables
businesses, the media, policymakers, and social entrepreneurs to
collaboratively create global impact.
Ashoka launched its Africa program in 1990 with the election of the first Fellow in Zimbabwe.
Since establishing its Southern African program, Ashoka Africa expanded to West Africa in
1992 and opened its East Africa office in 2001. Ashoka believes that building a critical mass
of leading social entrepreneurs with ground-breaking ideas is an important step toward
creating a vibrant, prosperous African continent. It functions through providing a number of
support services to the leading social entrepreneurs and is very well placed to connect
African and European changemakers.
The mPedigree Network (http://mpedigree.net/) is the global leader in the
use of mobile and web technologies in
securing products against faking,
counterfeiting and diversion. Many thousands of lives are lost
because of bad quality fake drugs in Africa. mPedigree tackles
the issue of counterfight drugs which are alarmingly more and
more difficult to identify through a mobile and web technology.
It is unique as it brings together drug manufacturers (who pay
for the service and protection of their brand), telecom
operators, regulators and pharmasists. Any person through
using a 10-digit non-duplicable code through a free SMS can verify if the drug is original.
mPedigree shows tremendous success scaling to numerous countries and partnering with
more than two-dozen telecom operators, Fortune 500 technology companies, and regulatory
agencies in several countries. Bright Simons describes mPedigree as ‘the building of an
infrastructure of trust’ with the potential to ‘totally transform the health
care system of Africa’.
Jokkolabs (http://jokkolabs.net) Jokkolabs is a network of spaces
across countries in Africa and elsewhere for young entrepreneurs and
technologists to work, receive clients, share ideas, build stuff, influence each other and make
things happen. Jokkolabs was inspired by the global open source movement and Africa’s
traditional emphasis on interdependence, Jokkolabs ensures that young African
entrepreneurs have the necessary infrastructure to collaborate on-line of in physical spaces
—rather than compete—to create new businesses and help solve some of their countries’
toughest problems. Jokkolabs creates the ecosystem linking to the necessary players and
encourages peer-to-peer learning, co-creation and development of a team spirit.
Beyond the collaborative brainstorming process, Jokkoworkers are able to rent office space
at Jokkolabs, share back end office needs, and even staff, as is beneficial. Jokkolabs helped

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April 2014
to create over 50 ventures and has spread its model from Dakar to Bamako, Ouagadougou,
Nanterre, Saint-Louis, Abidjan and Paris!
Skilled Africans (http://www.skilledafricans.com/) is a young and
dynamic organisation focused on building the necessary skills of the
young African population. By 2040 demographic evolution will result in
the volume of labour available in Africa being the most important in the
world, surpassing China and India. Key stakeholder groups central to
Africa’s economic growth and development can be increasingly hear say
that Africa’s richness is no longer primarily in its natural resources, but in its human
resources. In 2010, the two founders of SkilledAfricans realized that online professional
networks available on the web didn't fully address the needs of the Africans and have
created the first African professional social network.
SkilledAfricans meets the demands of professionals, students and African entrepreneurs by
providing them with an access to an open and free online business network, but also guiding
them through the most important skills for employability.
Barka Foundation (www.barka.org.pl) for Mutual Help was established as
a response to increasing social problems during transformation years.
Barbara and Tomasz Sadowski wanted to create conditions in which the
“forgotten and unwanted” could have a chance for personal growth and social development.
This mission influenced the creation of an alternative system of support, which gathers
people from the weakest groups, giving them possibilities to rebuild their lives, upgrade
vocational skills and find their way in the new socioeconomic reality. Among its many
projects, Barka has developed vocational schools for the unemployed, numerous social and
economic enterprises, a program of accessible housing and self-sufficient communities in the
countryside.Barka Foundation has scaled up its approach to UK, Netherlands, Ireland,
Canada and since 2002 to Africa through its Barka-Africa partnership - INISE (
www.inise.org)

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April 2014
4. RECOMMENDATIONS
4.1 Roundtable recommendations
The Roundtable has identified the following general recommendations:
 Ensure political commitment to ensure enabling environment for creation and
development of social enterprises.
 Ensure an eco-system boosting cooperation between social enterprises, across borders,
regions and continents.
 Need for development and promotion of funding mechanisms to ensure start-up and
scaling-up of social enterprises, this includes among others: social impact investment,
crowdfunding, involving diaspora communities in Europe etc.
 Further research on the impact of Social Entrepreneurship on the economy.
 Donors and especially private sector can play a greater role in supporting the
infrastructure and creating collaboration partnerships with social entrepreneurs, as it can
create sustainable long-lasting win-win partnerships.
 Create awareness about social entrepreneurship, integrating it into the curriculum and
ensuring youth is aware of it as a way for them to get active in a labour market and create
jobs.

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April 2014
4.2 Five Concrete Actions
The following five concrete actions were identified as the most urgent:
1. Create a Social Entrepreneurs Working Group consisting of the most successful,
reputable and ethical social entrepreneurs in the world to provide advice to the EU
Commissioners and member Heads of State on ways to foster creative and practical
citizen led solutions to social problems. This should involve practitioners (social
entrepreneurs) which might be appointed for the fixed-term non-renewable advisor
appointments.
2. Develop common infrastructure: creation of an EU-Africa network of incubators/
accelerators focused on social enterprises. (This might for example ensure creation of
a network embedding some 20-25 existing incubators/accelerators encouraging them
to cooperate to build common tools; methodologies and encourage cooperation and
peer-to–peer learning.) Initiatives to be embedded inside secondary and tertiary
institutions across the Africa and the EU. This could be an opportunity to exploit and
transfer the experience and expertise of incubators of the European Union that have
managed to develop new social economy structures and new business models for
social enterprises in the transformation period from state controlled economies to
social market economies.
3. Feasibility study on the highest-impact ideas that social entrepreneurship can tackle
and supporting their scaling. This can be done based on “Change Nations” event that
took place in Ireland bringing social entrepreneurs from variety of areas and linking
them to the investors. Europe-Africa “Change Nations” could bring social
entrepreneurs from Africa and Europe would offer solutions across the entire range of
countries to interested investors - from South Africa in the south to Sweden in the
north and include the countries of Eastern Europe.
4. Creation of funds:
 Matching fund for accelerating investments for social entrepreneurs working
across the EU-Africa
 Seed Social Impact fund especially focused on provision of initial investment /
grants for prototyping for social entrepreneurs
 Small farmer carbon fund for awards for carbon sequestration by creating value
chains that create sustainable ways of enhancing organic content of soil.
5. Creation of an on-line portal collecting data on social enterprises across Africa
(similar to Social Innovation Europe
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/socialinnovationeurope/home), where it would be
possible for investors, social entrepreneurs or individuals interested in the subject
identify interesting examples.

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